WITNESS-2: Quantum-Sourced Authorization Nonces with Verifiable Provenance — Preregistered Execution Record

WITNESS-2 is the second experiment in the WITNESS series (Quantum-Nonce Authorization Provenance Study), conducted by Remnant Fieldworks Inc. It demonstrates that a quantum-sourced nonce bound to a specific execution context via the ARK-457 five-dimensional authorization boundary can withstand: (a) honest end-to-end verification against the IBM provider record, (b) substitution/tamper detection across four distinct forgery patterns, and (c) cross-context replay rejection through both record-hash integrity and ARK-457 context binding. QPU execution: ibm_fez, 4000 shots, 8 qubits, 256/256 unique measurement outcomes. All three preregistered cases PASS. Improvements over WITNESS-1: length-prefixed (LP) SHA-256 nonce construction (v2), deterministic calibration schema, explicit provider-provenance boundary in W2-C1. Related: WITNESS series concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21424323; WITNESS-1 DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21424324; GitHub repository https://github.com/derekhone/witness-testbeds.